Day 12: A Photo a day 365

Day 12: Today's recipe experiment, Applesauce Crisp.

Applesauce Crisp:
2 cups applesauce
1 cup oatmeal
3 heaping tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 cup oil/butter

Mix oatmeal, sugar, cinnamon, and butter in a bowl. Dump applesauce in pan or on pie tin, crumble oatmeal mixture over top. Bake at 350 for 1/2 an hour. Stir it together and enjoy.

The joy of giving, for the kitchen.

 Christmas came and Christmas went. 

Hallelujah the Son of God is born!

This is a place to post things that I make, I feel a little weird posting the Christmas gifts that I made because I made them for the people and not to post. But yet I made them so here you go.  

This is a 5 bean soup mix that I made. I used this recipe from Back To Her Roots. According to my sister who has already made a batch, the spice packet was absolutely delicious! It sure smelled good when I was mixing it up so I knew it was going to be yummy. (By the way, I love making bean soups which is why I gifted them.)

These are microwave bowl pot holders. I don't have the original post that I got the pattern from. My mom posted it on Facebook a while before Christmas (and yes I have searched Facebook). She not-so-subtlety hinted that she would like a couple for Christmas. I was okay with that. I like easy Christmas gifts. (My sisters and I also gave her and my dad tickets to the Phantom of the Opera and they had a blast!)

These I made on my own. I probably should have made a tutorial for them. Ah well, I need a few more so when I make them next I will take pictures and write up a tutorial. They are waterproof, (using leftover PUL from James's diapers) reusable, zippy bags. I gave a few for Christmas because I love them. Great snacks like apples, celery, and carrots.

I may have kept some of these for myself too, both the bowl cozies and the zippy bags. Right now the zippy bags are my favorite. Great for packing Mr. Sir's lunches for work!

Live and Love

Rendering Lard, Fatty Pigness

I love pies, I love pie crusts. So does Mr.Sir, he practically begs me for pumpkin pie year round. I just strongly dislike rolling out pie crusts. I will just squish it into the pan before I clean off the counter to roll out one pie crust. So what I do is I will make 5 or 6 crusts and freeze them. After making a few crust with oil recipes and one with a lard recipe. I am a believer in Lard. Lard is a super fattening ingredient but if you are having pie, you are splurging on calories anyways so might as well make it good. Everything in moderation.

I went to Wal-Mart to buy lard for my pie crusts , found a box and brought it home. Mr. Sir read the box and said "Uh, Honey? Why did you buy hyrdogenated lard?" I had no idea, I just saw the word "Lard". I was using lard for the flakeyness and to avoid hydrogenated oils to begin with, yet here I was buying hydrogenated lard. So Mr. Sir and I agreed that we would try the real stuff.



When we went to pick up our beef from the butcher I asked to buy some lard. He gave me this big bag full of white and pink stuff. I've never seen unrendered lard before.



I got home and used this tutorial on how to render it by My Humble Kitchen. Mr. Sir helped me chop it up and we stuck it in the crockpot.

After a couple of hours, I strained out the cracklings and poured it into mason jars.



 4.6 pounds of unrendered lard got me a quart and half a pint of snow white lard. It is going to last me ages, but its the good stuff!

 Mnmmm Pie

Live and Love

Cheese Potato Egg Breakfast Pie

One morning I had a lonely pie crust sitting in my freezer. I thought to myself "This must be used!!" (Mostly because we had 3/4 of a cow to go into our chest freezer in meat form. But also because I was really hungry. ) So I dug through my fridge and freezer and came up with Cheese Potato Egg Breakfast Pie. It consisted of

1/2 a bag of Bob Evans Breakfast Potatoes
3 Eggs
a handful  of frozen cauliflower
1/4 cup cheddar cheese
1/4 cup of velveeta stye melty cheese
a couple of spoonfuls of cream cheese
salt
pepper
herbs of choice

mix the eggs, cauliflower, salt, pepper, and herbs. Put potatoes in pie crust, pour egg mix over potatoes, cover with cheese and throw the slabs of cream cheese on top. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or until eggs are done. Yum. I usually just cook by eye and handfuls so do what works best for you.

Live and Love

P-P-P-Pie Day.

My sister had this brilliant idea of doing a pie day after Thanksgiving this year. Because really, we always have a ton of leftovers and it usually ends up being turkey sandwiches. After many years of turkey sandwiches; it was time for a change. A pie change. Instead of going out and buying crusts I decided to make ours in advance so I came equipped with 5 wheat pie crusts (lesson learned: next time don't play with the pie crust recipe and just make them white crusts instead of getting fancy and adding wheat flour, they baked a little tough)

So our Post-Thanksgiving menu consisted of
- Leftover Turkey Pot Pie with veggies and leftover brussel sprouts.
- 2 Apple Pies
- Leftover Pumpkin pie
- and an absolutely delicious Pecan Pie

Pot Pies

I made the pot pie, my sister made the apple pies (with both fresh granny smith apples and some frozen apples that I prepared earlier this fall), and our mother made the pecan pie.

Apple, Pecan, and Pot Pies

The pecan pie was wonderful, it was made with dates and date sugar with only a little bit of brown sugar used. It was so sweet you could only eat 1/2 a slice with a cup of coffee. It was wonderful (in my opinion, because I like sweets).It also had an almond flour crust. Nice and nutty with the pecans.

Apple Pies

My sister also brought some Apple Mead. Oh. My. Word. Chilled Apple Mead = Complete Bliss.

Apple Pie

I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Live and Love

Focaccia Bread Deliciousness

Homemade bread is delicious. So very delicious that I am at the point where going down the bread aisle in the grocery store will make me nauseous. It just smells so fake. If I end up buying bread at the store I will opt to spend just a few cents more and get the bakery bread. I am especially fond of the discounted bakery bread at Wal-Mart. Though, I am not a fan of Wal-Mart in general, just the bread.

I found this recipe at Cupcake Project for Foccaccia bread and have been making it ever since. Today while making it, I even realized that I have it memorized.

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 C all-purpose flour (added in parts)
• 1 tsp white sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp active dry yeast
• 1 C warm water
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 3 tbsp olive oil

Instructions

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer, mix 1 cup flour, sugar, salt, and yeast.
2. Mix in warm water, vegetable oil, and egg until dough is moist.
3. Beat on medium for 2 additional minutes.
4. Stir in 1 3/4 cup flour while beating until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl.
5. Remove dough from the bowl and knead in 3/4 cup flour on floured surface.
6. Cover dough and let sit for 5 minutes.
7. Place dough on a greased baking sheet. Roll out to a 12 inch circle (or whatever shape you choose).
8. Cover with plastic wrap and a cloth towel.
9. Place in a warm place for 30 minutes.
10. Uncover dough, and poke holes in it with a spoon handle at 1 inch intervals.
11. Drizzle olive oil on dough.
12. Bake at 400 F for 17 to 27 minutes, until just golden.

When I make it, I sometimes add 2 teaspoons of herbs to the dough to make it nice and fragrant. My favorite mix is Italian seasoning, it makes my house smell like a pizza shop. Or rosemary is good on it too. Also, what I do about 90% of the time is take a cup or a cup and a half of the white flour and trade it out for wheat flour, rye flour, or triticale (rye-wheat mix) flour. Adds fiber, and tastiness.

I should also add that I don't actually knead it on a counter, I just knead it in the bowl and leave it in there to rest for the 5 minutes, then I take it out and put it on my baking stone (with corn meal sprinkled on top instead of oil) and roll it out with a rolling pin to make it the size of the baking stone. 

I will cut slivers off and eat with butter and jam. Or I cut it into squares and slice those in half (Hamburger bun style) and use them as buns or sandwich bread.

My favorite part about this recipe is that I can whip up a loaf of bread in less than an hour. It is about 10 minutes of actual work, the rest of the time is resting, rising and baking time.

I highly suggest this recipe if you are in the mood for a warm, toasty, fresh-out-of-the-oven treat. Or sandwich bread, it makes GREAT sandwich bread.
 
Live and Love

Kitchen Island Happiness

Our main floor is very open and wide and for a while now Mr. Sir and I have been itching for another countertop. This past weekend we finally gave in while strolling through Ikea (where all great splurges happen!) We found this kitchen island for 400 dollars. Just what we were looking for. Something to sit and eat at, while still giving me some more kitchen storage space. So far, I am completely in love with it. It gets the eggs off of the top of the microwave and the spice box off the top of the refrigerator, making the kitchen look more streamlined. I don't have a picture of the kitchen itself, I had just finished baking and it was a disaster.

I also took all of my clear jars full of grains and beans out of the cupboard and put them on the island so that I can see what I have better. (I then put the mixer in the cupboard to get it off of the counter, so nice to have that counter space! Too bad the mixer didn't fit on our island.)

We also figured out that it is one of our biggest splurges since we have bought our house, and a much needed splurge. Frugality is nice, but so is a happy kitchen!

Live and Love!

Tea/Coffee Cupboard

I am so excited about this that I have to post it. Mr.Sir and I got all motivated tonight and organized the tea and coffee cupboard. We moved all of our bulk tea's into little labeled jars so that we can see what we have easier. Yes, we drink that much coffee and tea that we have an entire cupboard dedicated to it. There is also hot chocolate mixed in there too.

Anyways, every time we go to the Natural Food Coop we always have way too much fun in the bulk tea and herb section. We have found that it is so much cheaper to buy the tea in bulk rather than in bags. It looks expensive when you look at the container (ex. 35.00/lb) but tea and herbs are so light it adds up really slowly. When drinking it, for just one mug we have a 'tea' spoon with holes in it, and for a pot of tea we just put it in the french press. I am not saying that we don't drink tea in bags, because we do. They are just so easy. But we also like our loose tea and our herbal tinctures with basil, oregano, and the such. It depends on our mood and the time of day.

I have also started making my own additions. A couple of those containers have home grown dried mint leaves and powdered orange peel that we have preserved ourselves. I don't have much in the way of an herb garden yet but next year I plan on putting a little more effort into one. It is so easy and takes very little time to make your own.

Live and Love

Food Storage, Rice and Beans

A few weeks ago I came across this blog called Earthineer. It is pretty neat in general but I found this article called "Long term food storage, done cheaply" about storing food long term, on the cheap. They just use 2 liter bottles and put rice and beans in them with bay leaves to kill any bugs or larvae that might be in the rice. It keeps for years and stacks nicely in little crannies. How ingenious. Right now I have 20 lbs of rice taking up room in my freezer.

Did you know that some rice comes complete with bug larvae? That is why when you leave it in a warm (sealed) container in the cupboard you still get bugs in it. Personally, I don't care about the bugs as long as they aren't alive destroying my pantry. So I freeze them and kill them. Problem is that now I am out of freezer space. So I am now going to try this bottle storage trick. We don't drink much pop out of 2 liter bottles but I do save all of our old liquor bottles. Something about the glass feels classy, even though its not.

So here I go. Being all frugal and stuff. I will update later when I find out how well it works. Until then, Live and Love.

Cucumbers with Hummus

One of my main goals during this pregnancy is to eat and keep healthy. This means remembering to walk and do my squats. I had icky 'morning sickness' my first trimester, dropping 15 pounds in about 4 weeks. Also, at the moment I am craving lots of healthy foods such as celery with ranch, oranges, and cucumber. So I need to remember to try adding lots of protein to my veggies. Here is my lastest protein packed concoction.

Cucumbers with Hummus.
For the hummus I take and rehydrate dried chickpeas (cheaper than buying them in a can), blend them in the blender adding lemon juice, olive oil, and chickpea juice all to taste plus a dash of salt. That is it. I don't add the tahini because it is something that I don't think I have ever had in my household. I know the tahini makes it just that much more yummier but unless I specifically put it  on my grocery list, it never ends up in my hummus.
I just put the hummus on my cucumbers and made it pretty with Paprika. Simple, to the point and delicious.

Live and Love

Dilly Beans

I realized a couple of days ago that I haven't posted in almost a month! It has been quite crazy around here. I was trying to think of things that I have accomplished to post about, but it has been so busy that I haven't gotten much done around here.

So yesterday I took some green beans from our garden and made dilly beans. I love dilly beans with a passion, especially my mom and dad's dilly beans. I used a different recipe, I used the one from the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving.

We aren't quite sure how they will turn out though, first of all the type of green beans we planted this year aren't very tasty. We are hoping that the taste improves with the pickling. Second, we didn't have any garlic cloves so we used minced garlic. Third, we also didn't have any dill seed heads so we used dried dill seed. Finally, our jars were just a little too empty so we filled the space with some onion.

So, hopefully they turn out okay. If they aren't any good then we aren't out too many ingredients.
Live and Love

Strawberry Jam Delight!

I am in Rochester MN for a Quilt Show at the moment but these strawberries look too yummy not to post.

Last week I went strawberry picking. It was a first time for this girl. Tons of fun too. I didn't even get 1/4 way down the row of strawberries and I had already picked 20 pounds. I am also pretty sure that I ate 3 pounds while picking and had a tummy-ache for the rest of the day. (I went picking at 9 am before it got hot so I had a looong tummy ache).

Mr. Sir and I decided to make strawberry jam out of some of them.



 


and I froze the rest to combine with other fruits later for jam. Oh and smoothies!

 I took the healthiest looking stems and dehydrated them in the oven at 170 for about 7 hours. They were still damp though and so I upped it to 200 and 2 hours later they were fine. Next time I am going to just start at 200 and shorten the baking time. Oh I should mention that the stems are dehydrated for a strawberry tea infusion. We go through a lot of tea and have decided to start making our own infusions when possible. *Live and Love*

The little bit that we scraped out of the pan when done.

Jam!

Draff Bread

Mr. Sir got a beer making kit for Christmas and I dried all of his left over grain to make bread, granola, to add to cookies and other goodies. It is my way of reusing the leftovers. So here is my draff bread recipe.
I used the Amish White Bread Recipe from All Recipes ( http://allrecipes.com/recipe/amish-white-bread/ ) and ground up my draff so it wasn't quite a powder, it looked more like coffee grounds and I substituted 3/4 cup of white flour from the recipe and added my draff. It is migh
 tasty.
Live and Love

Easy Peasy Croutons

If there is one thing that I love to eat, it is salads. You can do so much with them to give them different tastes and textures but some of my favorite toppings are homeade croutons.

No, these are not those croutons where you start chewing them and it sounds like fireworks in your head. These croutons have just a pleasant  crunch (unless you burn them, that is a whole other problem).
What you need:
-One loaf of store brought bread (or stale bread, or that homeade loaf that you can't do anything with because you messed it up and its all crumbly *guilty*) I used to get my bread at the day old bread store where I would get 2 loaves for a dollar and freeze it until I wanted croutons.
-1/3 cup olive oil mixed with herbs of your choice (I usually just smell the herbs and decide what I prefer that day) and garlic salt
-Cookie sheets

 

 First, I mix my olive oil, herbs, and garlic salt together to get the herbs to re-hydrate a little bit.

Then cube up your loaf of bread.

When you are ready, toss the bread with the olive oil mix, add the mix a little bit at a time so that it evenly covers the bread crumbs.

Spread out on a cookie sheet and stick in the oven for 10 minutes, pull out and stir a little bit with a spatula and put in for another 5 minutes. Then keep a close eye on the croutons and take out when they are done to your liking. I like them best at a little bit darker golden color. I don't have a picture of the finished croutons, but I can guarantee that they are deeelicous. I usually store them in a tupperware container on the counter. Hope you enjoy!

Live and Love

Eggs.... A staple in my home.

One of the staples in my home are eggs. Raw eggs can last up to four weeks in the fridge, if you are not sure if they are good you can do the 'float' test. When we grocery shop we usually buy eggs by the flat (2 1/2 doz.) because we go through them like crazy. A flat is about $3.19 which makes it about .10 cents an egg. Such a good frugal food, especially when there is just me and my husband in our home.

Hard boiled eggs are also a staple in my home. When I bring the flat of eggs home, I immediately boil 12 of them for hard boiled eggs. Hard boiled eggs last up to a week in the fridge but they are usually all eaten before that in my fridge. I send an egg in my husbands lunch every day and sometimes he eats another one as soon as he gets home. I found that hard boiled eggs are perfect for lunches because when I am packing the lunch at 5:00 in the morning I can just open the 4 oz. tupperware, set the egg in and throw it in the box. I use the tupperware to prevent it getting crushed in his lunch box.

Another reason we buy eggs by the flat is so that we will remember to eat them, they are so yummy and good for us. They only have 70 calories an egg (that's less than those silly 100 calorie packs and at only ten cents an egg....Score!) and are full of protein so they fill you up and keep you full for longer.

Some more reasons we always have lots of them around. Baking. I love to bake and most of my favorite recipes have eggs in them. Also, Cooking. French toast, pancakes, omelets, scrambled eggs, quiche, fried rice, yada yada yada you get the picture. All of those yummy breakfast foods that you are supposed to make for breakfast but at 5:00 in the morning breakfast is the last thing I want to make. I usually end up making them for supper, or brunch on the weekend. So my husband has gotten into the habit of microwaving an egg (in a bowl for about one minute till its not runny), adding a slice of cheese and jelly on top of a piece of toast. It's a quick, easy, healthy, yummy egg sandwich for breakfast.

Well, that is my rambling about how much I love eggs. Guess what, there just happens to be a pot of eggs hard boiling on the stove right now. :)

Live and Love

Marion's Slappy Recipe for Making TACOS! (It's a hoot)

I would have to say that there is nothing better than going through 1 or 2 generation old recipes. It shows a whole new side to the Family that I wasn't able to know very well. Here is a hilarious recipe for tacos that my Great Aunt Marion made and my Grandma Donna wrote up.


1 lb Hamburger
Salt, Pepper, Onions, Garlic Salt (everything else you can think of, including the kitchen sink) Brown- then add 1 can tomato sauce and a dash or two of taco sauce if want it a little more hot- Then if you want it REALLY delicious throw in a small brick of frozen chili con carne - (optional)  (That's Dee-Rish-us, as Larry used to say) I haven't used that in ages tho', always forgot to buy it- Simmer for a little while- then when it's all done dump a tablespoon or two of that meat goop into each shell and pop them into the oven for  5 minutes or so (just to heat them) then add your shredded lettuce, tomatoes, etc, cheese if desired and squirt on a couple drops of taco sauce, then sit back and wait for the indigestion..
Some recipe huh?


That whole section is the recipe, from 1 lb all the way to huh? I might just have to make these taco's, except for using the frozen chili con carne, not sure if you can still get that in the store, its a little outdated. Oh and I have absolutely no idea who Larry is. I might have to call my Dad and see if he knows. ( I called and Larry is one of my many cousins)

Live and Love

These are not Marions taco's. I just googled 'taco' and these looked the most delicious.